Week 10: And Then There Were Four

My last week at CMOP was very quiet, since only four interns were left, but it was also very busy. Most of my week was spent on wrapping up my project so that my mentors could use and understand what I have accomplished over the summer. I organized all of my experiment files so that they could be acessed quickly and so that they could be more intuitive. I also worked on finishing up my final paper. A long and tortuous ordeal, but one that will be fruitful in the end. It has allowed me to look back on my project and understand that I have accomplished quite a lot over the past 10 weeks, as well as put all my information and conclusions into one place for my mentors.

Other than that, I finished up a few experiments that I started last week. The redo 1,2-DCP experiment was less fruitful than I had hoped. No leaking was noticed in the septum, but the mole balance was as bad or worse than the original experiment. But, I also finished up the propene control experiment, which showed that propene is disapearing at a rate slightly slower than that of 1,2-DCP, so this could explain the dip in propene production towards the end of the experiment.

I had a very fun time with my intenship. I learned a lot, for example lab skills and patience for science. And I would not have accomplished what I did this summer without the awesome mentorship of Paul Tratnyek and Ali Salter-Blanc, as well as the support from the rest of the interns, and CMOP as a whole, and would therefore like to thank them immensly.

Thanks for reading.

Doug Meisenheimer, signing off.